The following is a conversation with Michael Malice, his second time on the podcast.

He's an anarchist, political thinker, podcaster, and author.

He wrote Dear Reader, which is a book on North Korea, and The New Right, a book on the various

ideological movements at the fringe of American politics.

He hosts a podcast called You're Welcome, spelled Y O U R, and in general, there's

a lot of live shows on YouTube that are at times profoundly absurd, and at other times

absurdly profound, and always full of humor and wisdom.

He is the Joker to my Batman, and the Caviar to my Vodka.

His masterful dance between dark humor and difficult, even dangerous ideas, challenges

me to think deeply about this world, and when that fails, at least smile and have a good

laugh at the absurdity of it all.

This episode has much of that.

His outfit, for example, the exact inverse of mine, with a white suit and a black shirt,

is just one example of that, of the humor, trolling, and brilliance that is Michael Malice.

Quick mention of our sponsors, NetSuite, Business Management Software, Athletic Greens, All

In One Nutrition Drink, Sun Basket, Meal Delivery Service, and Cash App.

So the choice is success, health, food, or money.

Choose wisely, my friends, and if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount

and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that Michael is, in many ways, a man of radical ideas, but

also a man with kindness in his heart.

Those two things are great ingredients for a fascinating conversation.

I hope to have several such people on this podcast this upcoming year who also have radical

ideas about politics, science, technology, and life.

At times, often perhaps, I might fail at asking the challenging questions that should be asked,

but I will try my best to do so, and hope to keep improving every time.

Mostly, I come to these conversations with an open mind and with love.

Unfortunately, that kind of approach can be taken advantage of in many ways.

It can be used by reporters or just people online later to highlight how or why I'm

ignorant or worse, I'm generally not a good human being.

In the context of this, I have two options.

I could either be cautious and afraid, or second, be kind, thoughtful, and fearless.

I choose the latter.

Hopefully while still being open, fragile, and empathetic.

Again, I strive to be like the main character of The Idiot by Dostoevsky.

That's my New Year's resolution.

Be kind and do difficult things.

Difficult conversations, difficult research projects, and difficult entrepreneurial adventures.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Michael Malice.

Knock knock.

You're stealing my bed?

I'll kill your family.

That's not how a knock knock joke works.

Knock knock, Michael.

You don't do knock knock jokes with Russians because if we have a knock at the door, turn

down the TV.

You got to sit quiet.

We hope they go away.

You don't do that back in the motherland.

You know this.

It's triggering.

Who's there?

I can't even do it now.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Leon.

Leon who?

Leon me when you're not strong, Michael.

Well, that will never happen.

I stole elegantly, eloquently that joke from you.

The lie detector term, that was a lie.

Elegantly and eloquently.

Oh.

Yeah, you crossed it out on a sheet of paper.

That means it's real.

The reason I bring it up is because you had the guts, the brilliance to do a knock knock

joke.

Not once, but three times with Alex Jones.

I think it was like six.

I had a runner.

Okay.

Maybe they started to sort of melt together in this beautiful art form that you've created,

which is like these kind, loving knock knock jokes with Alex Jones.

So you got the chance to meet him and talk to him twice with Tim Pool in a long form

conversation.

What was it like talking to Alex Jones, both on the deep philosophical intellectual level

and staring the man in his eyes and doing a knock knock joke about Olive knock knock.

Who's there?

Olive.

I love you, Alex.

I love you.

Well, there's a lot to explain.

Where do you start?

I've been on his show Infowars a few times when I was researching my book, Then You Write.

So I had had conversations with him before.

One of the things that I appreciate about Alex is he is a lot more self aware than people

think and has a good sense of humor.

And I also like a good twist ending.

So if you set people up and all these jokes are these kind of vapid, you know, all of

you jokes and the last one's about building seven, they're not going to see that one coming

nor will he see that one coming.

I even had another one about Sandy Hook, which I didn't do on the air because he was being

like a good sport, but that was the dagger that was kind of behind my back if necessary.

But it was a good mechanism toward I like it when things work on several levels.

It was also a good mechanism to keep kind of the conversation guarded and this every

so often, this is kind of hitting the control, alt, delete and bring it down to a certain

point of calmness.

What about the love thing?

I mean, you're saying that that was a buildup to the dagger, but it was also somehow really

refreshing to get that little jolt, like that pause.

You don't get that in conversations often.

Like I'm a huge fan of Rogan and he'll have a three hour conversation, but at some point

just pause and be like, I love you, man.

Like it's in the cheesiest way possible because that seems to be, it somehow hits the hardest

then.

I don't know.

I don't know you didn't intend it that way, but with Alex Jones to sit there and to say,

I love you.

That was like, I just haven't never heard that before.

And so it struck me as like, not just funny for what you're doing, but just like, whoa,

we just took, cause conversations are all about like this ranting, especially with Alex

Jones, just like ranting about this or that, this part of the world, like, can you believe

this shit?

That kind of thing.

But like to pause and be like, this is awesome.

I don't know if you felt that way, but.

Oh, I definitely felt that way.

So it was actually very fun.

I'll give you the backstory of how that happened.

It was silly cause Tim calls me up and there's this expression in marketing, don't go past

the sale.

Right?

You're gonna buy someone a car and like, it's got this feature, this feature and that feature.

And they're like, you know what?

I'm going to buy the car.

If you keep talking, you can only make them lose the sale.

You just get them to sign and get, get out of Dodge.

So Tim calls me up and he goes, okay, here's what we're thinking.

This is top secret.

Alex is going to be on the show.

We want you on as well.

And I've never said yes to anything as quickly in my life.

And then he keeps talking and I'm like, Tim, this, you don't have to sell it.

I interrupted him.

I go, you don't have to sell it.

Why you, by the way?

I think because I am kind of an agent of chaos and Alex is in his own way, an agent of chaos.

And what is, provides an opportunity in this kind of news media space that you and I travel

in, it's the kind of things where none of us three, you know, as we said on the show,

knew what it would be like.

If you, you know, to certain, within certain parameters, what, you know, Megyn Kelly or

Wolf Blitzer or any of these corporate figures are going to be like in a conversation to

some extent, none of us had any idea.

I knew they didn't know I was bringing in knocking up jokes.

So that was kind of what was so exciting.

I said at one point, I'm kind of envious of the audience because this is, there's so many

exciting things that are happening and that the internet and podcasting provides people

an opportunity to do that.

It was great.

Yeah.

That, that was the greatest pairing with Alex Jones that I've ever seen by far.

So like, so I immediately knew now this isn't a knock on Tim, but I don't even know if Tim

was prepared.

Tim was not prepared.

For this.

How could he be prepared?

Well, so I mean, I don't know if Tim is used to that.

I think Joe Rogan is more equipped, prepared for the chaos, just the years he's been in

it.

Like I immediately thought this is the right pairing for Joe Rogan because Alex Jones has

been on Joe Rogan a few times, three times.

My favorite so far was with Tim Dillon, but Tim was clearly, Tim Dillon was also kind

of a genius in his own right, but he was kind of a fan and he was stepping away.

He was almost like in awe of Alex Jones where you were both, you were in awe of the experience

that's being created and at the same time fearlessly just trolling the situation.

I mean, to do a knock, knock joke, to stop, I mean, that just shows that you're in control

of the experience.

No, you're like riding the experience.

That immediately was like, this needs to be on Rogan.

So I hope that happens as well.

You're on your own, of course, on Rogan, but just you, that's an experience.

That's the, whatever, this gotta be a good name for it.

Like Jimi Hendrix Experience, there's the Michael and Alex.

Because that was a band.

It's taken.

Well, I don't know how many years you can restart the experience.

Because I feel sorry to interrupt you, I feel a very big responsibility, especially in 2020

to provide fun and something cool and something unique that hasn't been done before for the

audience.

I think this has been a very rough year on our audiences psychologically and in other

aspects of their lives.

So I feel if I'm going to be there, I'm going to put on a show and it's also going to be

great because it also alienates the people you don't want.

So there's a lot of people who sit there and be like, oh, he's telling knock, people who

are too cool for school, where they're like, oh, he's telling knock, knock jokes.

This is stupid.

I'm like, good.

If you have an issue with having eaten cotton candy or doing a puzzle with a kid or with

that by yourself, that's on you.

And it's something very, something I think is the enemy is cynicism and this idea that

like, oh, this is too silly and we need that kind of childlike aspect in our lives.

I think it's something we could use more of.

It's very much an aspect of our media culture that to kind of have be condemnatory about

that or to do it in a certain very corporate fake way.

So it is something I encourage a lot, something I enjoy doing.

And again, like with the first time I was on Tim, I had a propeller beanie on, you know,

with the motorized and a lot of people were like, I can't take anyone seriously who dresses

like this.

I go, good.

If you judge someone's ideas by how they appear instead of the ideas themselves, you're not

someone I want on my team.

Are we going to address the outfit you're wearing?

We can address it, sure.

You know, for those who are colorblind, Michael's wearing the, or just listening to this, Michael's

wearing the exact opposite, the universe from another dimension outfit, which is a white

suit and black shirt.

So genius.

Okay.

So.

You just see the next two looks I've planned.

Oh, no.

Yeah, they're great.

Well, obviously this relationship's going to end today.

It's over.

I'll put them on Insta.

Okay.

Is there some deep philosophy to the humor?

Is this goes to our trolling discussion?

Is there some, is there like chapters to this genius or is this just what makes you smile

in the morning?

Well, I mean, I think you're honestly, in this case, using the word genius a little

loosely.

I am.

I don't think this is particularly genius, but I do think it is fun.

It is exuberant.

It is joyous.

I think the bigger my audience has gotten and the more I actually communicate with,

you know, fans, I do feel it kind of kicks in these paternal maternal instincts, which

is very, very odd.

I did not expect to have them.

What do you mean?

Who's the dad?

I'm the dad and the mom.

I remember, and it may have been similar for you, I'm curious to hear it.

For young, smart, like ambitious men, like 24 to 27 for me was a very rough period because

that's the window where a lot of people get married and they kind of check out.

And if you're very much kind of finding your own road, you don't know what's happening.

No one's in a position to really guide you or help you.

And it's tough.

It's a very tough window.

And what I'm finding now is having these kids who are in that position, but now instead

of them stumbling along, for some of them, I'm the one who could be like, no, no, no,

it's not you.

It's everybody else.

And to be able to give them that semblance of feeling seen, to use a cliched expression,

to feel normal and that, no, no, you're the heroes here.

They're the background noise.

It's just really very flattering and humbling to be in that position.

You have many minds, right?

There's the thoughtful kind, Michael, there's like, I'm going to burn down the powerful.

And then there's like, I'm going to have this just lighthearted trolling of the world, which

and which of those are most important to the 27 demographic?

I think it is the combination.

It's like if you're making a meal, chicken Kiev, you need the chicken, you need the ham,

you need the butter sauce.

Because I think people, when you're young, you need to see someone who's fought the fight

for you and who's won.

So it's very easy to be defeatist.

So this is what winning looks like.

No, this is not.

This is most assuredly what winning does not look like.

But in my normal clothes, a little bit more.

This is a good time to mention that clothes wise, you're wearing sheath underwear.

And people should buy sheath underwear.

Use code Malice20.

If you go to sheathunderwear.com, use promo code Malice20.

What I love about why I'm glad to promote the product and wear it, it's the most comfortable

underwear I've ever worn.

And you have a separate pouch for both parts of your genitals.

That's what I thought there was like a punchline coming.

No, it's a very nice aspect of the product.

Yeah.

But I think what here's something else just goes back to what we're just talking about.

There are so many and this is going to segue into this.

There are so many small companies who've been devastated this year.

We have not seen a sustained attack on mom and pop shops like we've seen in 2020, who

are innovators and making something happen.

And when you're just like one dude who's producing a product, they're a sponsor of mine.

I'm happy to, first of all, it's funny that I'm pitching underwear, but it's also something

I enjoy.

And also you said small business.

Yeah.

It's microscopic, like a thimble.

So this isn't a sponsor of mine, but this is a good segue.

So this is, Russians, we celebrate New Year's, it's Novomgorodom.

We have Dmitry, he comes down, puts a present under your pillow.

So this is a company called J.L. Lawson.

He's a fan of yours.

He's a metal worker.

And he said, can I give you something to give to Lex?

I have one of his worry coins.

I'll tell you what it is.

He's not a sponsor.

This is not, I'm not getting paid for this.

So what a worry coin is, I carry it around in my butt.

If you have raw denim, it's great because it brings you fades.

So you carry it around with you all the time.

It says worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe, right?

And I carry this around and allow it to spend like a year.

Next time you're worrying, and this is good advice if you don't have a worry coin.

Go think about 10 years ago and what you were worried about then.

And then think about, did any of those things pan out?

And some of them did, but you were able to handle it.

And that's a good way to maintain perspective.

So J.L. Lawson is the company.

He sent me this present.

I said, let me give it to Lex on air.

So enjoy.

So I have to open it up now?

Yeah.

J.L. Lawson and co.

Two Lex from Anthony.

Yeah.

And I said, make something mathematical for Lex.

So I don't even know what's in there.

You don't know what's in there?

No.

And it got through his TSA.

Could be a bomb.

It could be.

Just like this episode.

Make sure you unwrap it close to the mic because it drives you for crazy.

That's really the best part.

Is this what an unboxing video looks like?

I think so.

This conversation is going to be a big hit on the internet.

With the unboxing community.

I need to have an excited look on my face to make sure that the reaction video, it should

be an unboxing and a reaction video.

Lex Freeman reacts.

It's another box.

It's just a series of boxes.

Lex big fan since hearing you on Rogan months ago.

Most of your guests are over my head, but still enjoyable.

Like this episode, Michael was kind enough to want to share my work with you.

Keep doing what you do.

Anthony Lawson.

Thanks Anthony.

There's a lot in there.

What is in there?

Give me some.

I'll open some.

Okay.

All right.

Show it to the camera and then make sure you look excited or not or disappointed.

No, this is cool.

This is a worry coin.

Like I was showing you.

So you hold it in your hand and when you can do this with your thumb, if people are, have

anxiety or whatever.

Oh, there's a lot of cool stuff in here.

Fibonacci coin.

Oh, see, yeah, that's the math stuff.

That's really awesome.

This is really cool.

Wait, you got a big one laying there too.

That's what she said.

I'm telling you last time you offended me saying I don't have humor.

The spin tray micro brass and copper bronze.

By the way, the packaging is epic.

I think that's his top.

He makes tops.

Cool.

Yeah, you spin it in there and it's the two different bronze and copper.

I think he's the only one who makes these machined tops and then they sit in here, I

guess.

Yeah, but you could spin them in that section.

Got it, cool.

Where's the where's the worry thing?

Here's the worry coin.

Anyway, I wasn't listening.

What were you worried about 10 years ago?

10 years ago, 2010.

What would I have been worried about then?

The government?

No, I'm not.

That's not a worry.

I think...

What was the North Korea book?

I apologize.

That came out in 2014.

I went there in 2012, came out in January 2014.

It still pays my rent with the royalties.

The North Korea book?

Yeah.

See, this is why it's so much better.

I gotta talk to you about self publishing because you brought that up.

I'm doing the next books also going to be self published.

Can we talk about self publishing?

What's the whole idea of publishing?

Like having a publisher and an agent because there's a bunch of people have been reaching

out to me trying to get me to write a book, which is ridiculous.

Why?

Because people who are brilliant folks like you, like Jordan Peterson, that I think have

a lot of knowledge to share with the world.

I think what I feel I can contribute to the world in terms of impact is to build something.

Meaning like engineering stuff.

Like a book...

A book has to be engineered and I'm not using that loosely.

You have to engineer a book.

No, for sure.

What I mean is like literally a product with programming and artificial intelligence.

I want to build a company.

I want to...

Because I have a few ideas that I feel I'm equipped and it has to do with your intuition

about the way you can build a better world.

You individually.

Like, what can you add to the world that's a positive thing?

And for me, I feel like the maximal thing I can add to the world is at least to attempt

to build products that would add more love in the world.

And like, so I want to focus on that.

The danger of the book for me, or any kind of writing, and even this podcast is a little

bit dangerous for me, is like, it's fun.

That's for sure.

It's fun.

It's like it takes you into this place where you start thinking about the world.

You start enjoying and playing with ideas.

You start...

And like, just your book on a Dear Reader, but also the new write.

Like clearly you and I probably think similarly in the sense that you did a lot of work.

Yes.

This next book is killing me.

Yeah.

As you mentioned, often it's clear, like on your YouTube channel, which I'm a fan of,

you often, it just comes out like you mentioned all of these books that you're reading.

It just comes through you that you're suffering through this and it changes you.

And it's clear that you're thinking deeply about the world because of this book.

And I feel like if you do that, that's like when I first came to this country, I read

the book The Giver.

I need to read it again.

It's like the red pill thing is it changes you in where you can never be the same person

again.

Sure.

I feel about a book in that same way.

The moment you write a book, of course it depends on the book.

I could also just write like in my field, a very technical book.

No, that's a terrible idea.

Yes.

But that's okay.

That doesn't really change you.

That's just like sharing information.

But like something where you're like, how do I think about this world?

Can you just leave that behind you?

I get it.

Dude, it's being pregnant.

It never escapes your brain.

I'm telling you.

You're absolutely right.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It does seem to change you.

The reason I bring that up is because there's this whole industry of people that seem to

not really contribute much to the publication process, but they make themselves seem necessary

for like, if you want to be in the New York Times bestseller list kind of thing, but also

just being like reputable, which I'm allergic to that whole concept.

But do you think it's possible to be on the New York Times bestseller list and be a reputable

author and still be self published?

Not what you would want to do.

Like people like Mark Sisson, I think is his name.

He wrote like the Primal Blueprints.

So like if I'm getting the names correct, he's the first paleo guy, right?

So he self published it.

It sold gangbusters.

But that would be on their health chart, I believe.

And it's a little bit of a different situation.

You would be reaching much more for the mainstream.

You'd be giving up a lot if you go through a publisher, especially financially.

But yeah, you are not going to have the cred because the publishing is a cartel.

The New York Times is part of this cartel.

And if you don't publish within this cartel, they will do what they can, as any cartel

has to, by necessity of being cartel, to pretend you don't exist.

So I was, I think, the first one to have an hour on BookTV for Dear Reader because that

was a Kickstarter book.

But this is something that people would have to be aware of.

So you would be giving up a lot.

But you'd also be giving a lot to work with a publisher because you're losing like a year

and a half of your life because they're glacial and they don't care.

Well, that's my problem.

It's not the money.

I mean, the money is whatever percent they take, 10, 20, 30, 50%.

They're taking a huge chunk.

So if I sell a book through St. Martin's, it's a dollar.

If I sell a book through Amazon, which is Dear Reader, that's $6.

So that's what, 87%, it's something crazy.

But for me, what bothers me isn't the money that, for me personally, for me, what bothers

me is incompetence.

Like whenever I go to the DMV or something like that.

Can I interrupt you?

Yeah.

Let's talk incompetence.

When a new write comes out last year, I get on Rogan, get on Ruben.

I call them and I said, I got on these shows.

Is there money in the budget for travel?

And they say, we don't have that budget.

Fine.

By the way, you got on those shows with no help from them.

Correct.

Oh yeah, that's not even a question.

The reason they would want you to do a book is because they know you could get...

The only reason people get book deals nowadays, literally, is because they know that person

can market their own book.

That's the only way.

And I got on Ruben, I got on Rogan, and they go and have the money for the budget for travel,

which is fair.

They can do Skype.

They told me this in writing.

And I'm like, okay.

And they can financially cover Skype.

No, but it's like, hey Joe, yeah, we don't have the budget, but you're going to do Skype.

Hello?

Hello?

There is, another friend of mine was on a show on CNBC with Nassim Taleb, and they said

Nassim wants a copy of the book.

And they're like, oh yeah, it's like four o clock on Friday, so we're closed.

So, and he's like, he went there, picked it up, and walked it the two blocks.

So there is, it's almost cartoonish, and it's not incompetence.

It's past that.

It's something almost, you can't really believe that, I've had two friends who have been literally

rendered suicidal because this was such a huge opportunity for them.

And it was like watching their kid get beaten in front of them, and I had to talk them off

the ledge.

So it's, people do not appreciate how bad, here's another example.

The apathy of bureaucracy, something like that.

I did this book, Concierge Confidential.

There's a typo in the first chapter, it ends with, I'm about to, TOO, they didn't fix it

for the paperback.

Who cares?

It's just like, well, okay, yeah, great book by the way, it got, NPR gave it one of the

books of the year, so that was good.

So why participate in this?

Because otherwise, New York Times is going to pretend you don't exist.

Getting booked on some shows might be more difficult.

Although I think that's collapsing in real time.

You're not going to get reviewed necessarily on places like PW, or some others.

So the new book you're working on, do you have a title yet?

The White Pill.

The White Pill.

Are you self publishing that?

Oh yeah, for sure.

And what's the thinking behind that?

Just because you already have a huge following and a big platform and...

It's six times the cash.

If I finish the book in December, I could have it out in February.

If I finish the book in December with the publisher, it's going to be out in December

at the earliest, 2021.

Why am I giving up 10 months of my life?

Well, this is the big one.

Do you have any leverage?

Like do authors have leverage to say, F you?

Can you just say, what do you mean?

Meaning like, I want to release this book in two months.

Oh no, no.

I mean, you'll have a contract and then your agent can fight it, but they don't have the

capacity to rush things through.

Yeah.

I guess if the, cause I've heard like big authors, I don't know, Sam Harris, all those

folks talk about like, they've accepted it actually.

They've accepted it.

They're like, yeah, it takes a long time to...

I'm not accepting it.

But you're kind of implying that a human being like me should, like...

I'm saying these are your options.

Right.

So I just, I just hate it.

I hate the waiting because it's incompetence.

It's not the, it's not necessarily the wait.

If I knew it wasn't, you know, if it was the kind of people that are up at 2 a.m. at night

on a Friday and they love what you're doing and they're helping create something special.

That's the sense I get with some of the Netflix folks, for example, that work with people.

I just, I don't know anything about this world, but you get like Netflix folks who, who help

with shows.

You could tell that they're obsessed with those shows.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

You're not going to get that publishing.

If you hand, like I handed the book in, I think it was July, I didn't hear anything from

my editor until December.

Well, can we actually talk about the suffering, the darkest parts of writing a book?

So the, let's go to the full Michael Malice, Stephen King mode of what are the darkest

moments of writing this book and what is it maybe start, the white pill?

What's the idea?

What's the hope and what are your darkest moments around writing this book?

So people are familiar with the red pill and the blue pill, the red, they're from the Matrix.

The red pill is the idea that what is presented as fact by the corporate press entertainment

industry is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some very unpleasant

people in power and everyone else under control.

And I guess one of my expressions is you take one red pill, not the whole bottle because

at a certain point you think everything's lie and then you're kind of no capacity for

distinguishing truths.

You're full of good one liners.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

I'm full of something that's for sure.

And what I saw in this space is a lot of these red pill people got very disheartened and

cynical.

And one of my big heroes is Albert Camus and he said the worst thing is cynicism.

And that's something called the black pill, which is the idea that, you know, it's all,

it's just we're waiting for the end.

It's hopeless.

And I don't see it that way at all.

And I'm like, all right, I have to address this.

And not just with some kind of cheerleading, everything's going to be great guys.

Here is why I am positive.

And not that I'm positive the good guys are going to win, but I'm positive that good guys

can win.

And that's all you need.

Because if your God forbid kid is kidnapped and there's a 10% chance that you can save

them, you're not going to be like, well, I don't like those odds.

This is your country.

This is your values.

This is your family.

And I think it's much more than 10%.

And even if you lose, you will take pride in that you did everything in your power to

win.

So.

Is there a good definition of good guys?

In the sense that.

The ones who wear white.

There's layers to this.

You're like modern day Shakespeare.

Is there a danger in thinking Adolf Hitler was probably pretty confident that he led

a group of good guys?

Listen, if Hitler did anything wrong, why isn't he in jail?

My Czech friend thought of that joke.

He actually says in his accent, he goes, if Hitler's so bad, why isn't he in the jail?

That's a good point.

He's probably still alive.

Right?

And look, yeah.

Hopefully.

Oh boy.

Two of the three people listening to this are very upset right now.

What were you even talking about?

Oh, how do you, how do you know the, what is good?

There's lots of standards of good, but if you're for me to be a good guy is if you want

to leave the world a little bit better than you found it, that to me is the definition

of a good guy.

And I think there are many people that that's not their motivation at all.

It's about your motivation.

Well, it's also about if your motivation is at all correlated to reality.

No one thinks we're the bad guys.

That's correct.

But are you taking steps to check your motivations and also take a certain amount of humility

because if you're going to start interfering with other people's lives, you really better

be sure you know what you're talking about.

The control of others, if you do have centralized control or then you kind of, you become a

leader of a group, you better know, you better do so humbly and cautiously.

And also have steam valves, right?

So if in case things go wrong, let's have, I'm sure this is a lot happening with AI,

whatever work with computers, like, okay, if something goes wrong here, how do we have

a workaround to make sure it doesn't cause everything to collapse?

Yeah.

The going wrong thing.

I mean, the whole, the feedback mechanism.

Yeah.

Like, I wonder if people in Congress think that things are really wrong.

It's working for them.

Are you sure?

No, I'm not sure.

Because I'd like to believe that the people that at least when they got into politics

actually wanted, some of it is ego, but some of it is like wanting to be the kind of person

that builds a better world.

Sure.

I also think it's diverse.

Some of who are going to have different motivations than others.

But like once you're in the system and trying to build a better world, how do you know that's

not working?

Like, how do you take the basic feedback mechanisms and like, and actually productively change?

I mean, that's what it means to be a good guy is like, hmm, something is wrong here.

And that's why I like the Elon Musk, like think from first principles, like, wait, wait,

wait.

Okay.

Let's ask the big question.

Like, can this be, one, is this working at all?

Like the way we're solving this particular problem of government, is this working at

all?

And then like stepping away and saying like, as opposed to modifying this bill or that

bill or like this little strategy, like increase the tax by this much or decrease the tax by

this much, like, why do we have a democracy at all?

Or why do we have any kind of representative democracy?

Shouldn't it be a pure democracy?

Or why do we have states, like representation of states and federal government and so on?

Why do we have this kind of separation of powers?

Is this different?

Why don't we have term limits or not like big things?

Like how do you actually make that happen?

And is that what it means to be a good guy?

It's like taking big revolutionary steps as opposed to incremental steps.

Well, I don't know that you could be a politician to be a good guy, to be honest.

And let me give you a counter example of someone who you could tell is not being a good guy.

Joe Biden said he regards the Iraq wars a mistake.

Okay.

You and I have made mistakes in our lives, I'm sure.

None of our mistakes have caused tens of thousands of people to die.

If I were a chef, let's take it out of politics.

And in my restaurant, somehow, accidentally, someone ate something and they died.

A, I would feel horrible.

But more importantly, I would be like, we need to look through the system and figure

out how it got to the point where someone lost their life.

Because that can never happen again.

And we need to figure out step by step.

I'm not a gun person, but there's like this checklist of like, if you're holding a gun,

there's five things to do.

And if you get too wrong, it's like assume every gun is loaded, only pointed at something

that you want to kill.

And there's like three other things.

And it's like to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

So if I'm that chef, and I would have to not only feel guilt, but take preventative action

to make sure this has no possibility of happening again.

If you look at the staff he's putting in, it's the same warmongers that would have advised

him to get into the Iraq war on the first time.

That is to me is not a good guy.

That to me is someone who does not feel remorse for their responsibility in killing not only

many Americans, but some of us think that, you know, dead Iraqis isn't necessarily ideal

either.

Okay, let's talk a bit about war.

Maybe you can also correct me on something.

The first time I found myself into Barack Obama was, I don't know how many years ago

this was, but when I maybe heard a speech of his about him speaking out against the

war.

Yeah.

And him, I think it's on record saying he was against the war before it was happening.

But he wasn't in Senate at the time, so it was very easy for him to say this.

But see, like people say that, people say that.

People say like it was easy and it was some people say it's like strategically the wise

thing to do given some kind of calculus, whatever.

But I, to this day give him, that's the reason I've always given him props in my mind.

Like this is a man of character, like he makes, I also personally really value great speeches.

I think speeches are really important for leaders because they inspire the world.

It's like one of the most best things you can contribute to the world is great, like

through intellect, mold ideas in a way that's communicable to like a huge number of people.

Yeah, it's better to persuade than to force in every instance.

That's where I disagree with Chomsky said, like if you're, Chomsky's whole idea was that

like if you're really eloquent speaker, that means your ideas aren't that good.

That's nonsense.

Yeah.

So I think that's a way for him to describe like I speak in a very boring way.

Maybe that's a pitch for this podcast.

I speak boring so that the ideas are the things you value and it's also useful to go to sleep.

But that's why I really liked Obama throughout his life and still do.

But when I first like saw this is for some reason you can disagree, I thought he's a

man of character.

It's when most politicians, most people who are trying to calculate and rise in power,

I think were for the war or too afraid to be against the war.

That's why I liked Bernie Sanders and that's why I liked like in the early days Obama for

speaking out against the war and not like in this weird activist way.

Not weird, but not saying I'm an activist, but like just saying the common sense thing

and being brave enough to say the common sense thing without like having a big sign and saying

I'm going to be the antiwar candidate or something like that, but just saying this is not a good

idea.

Yeah.

And I think it's for those of us who are old enough to remember, it's pretty despicable

what happened with Tulsi in 2020.

She was the biggest antiwar candidate and she was marginalized within her own party,

which I guess you can make sense.

She's just a congresswoman from Hawaii.

But the corporate press did everything in their power to diminish her and pretend she

didn't exist.

And for those of us who remember where 12 years prior, when George W. Bush had the Republican

National Convention in New York and it was the biggest protest in history and the Iraq

war led to democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008, to have that completely not part of

the Democratic Party in 2020 is both shocking and reprehensible.

Hey, Michael, you don't have to say, hey, Michael, you just say knock, knock, okay.

What did the volcano say to his true love?

What?

I love you.

These jokes are better when you know how to speak English.

It was actually in Russian, I did Google translate, okay.

Back to your book, In the Suffering, you somehow turned it positive.

And as one who's wearing, who's the representative of the black pill in this conversation, what

are some of the darker moments?

What are some of the hardest challenges of putting together this book, the white pill?

Content, content, content.

So if I'm having a page in about Reagan taking on Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential primaries,

I'm going to have to read like 20.

So it's the thing like if there'll be some times I'll remember some quote somewhere and

then I have to spend an hour trying to find it because I want it to be as dense with information

as possible.

Like how do you structure the main philosophical ideas you want to convey?

Is that already planned out?

No, the book changed entirely from its conception.

So my buddy Ryan Holiday had a series of books, still does, where he takes the ideas of the

Stoics and he applies them to contemporary terms.

He has this whole cottage industry that he's doing very well with.

And I'd asked him years ago if I could do that with Camus and he's like, sure, go for

it.

And I was going to rework Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.

And I read it recently, reread it, and this wasn't the book I remembered at all.

And I'm like, okay, I'm going to write the book that I remembered.

But the more I was writing it, one of the things I always yell at conservatives about,

there's a long list, is they don't talk about the great victory of conservatism, which was

the winning of the Cold War without firing a shot.

And I said, you can't expect the New York Times to tell this story because the blood

is on their hands.

And I'm like, well, Michael, instead of complaining about it, why don't you do it?

Why don't you talk?

That is a great example of the good guys winning over the bad guys.

And that's become, A, the victory is beautiful.

But also pointing out to people, when people are like, oh, things are worse than they've

ever been, they don't appreciate how bad things were in the 30s, what Stalin was doing overseas

and how people in the West were advocating to bring that here.

So that's kind of pointing out how bad things were and how good they became.

And you don't have to be a Republican or conservative to be delighted at the collapse of totalitarianism

and the peaceful liberation of half the world.

So that's a picture of the good guys winning.

Oh, yeah.

Well, how does that connect to Sisyphus and maybe to speak deeper to life and whatever

the hell this thing is, which is what I remember the myth of Sisyphus being about.

So where does the threat of Camus sort of lie in the work that you're doing?

So the myth of Sisyphus, which I had remembered incorrectly, is actually just a five to seven

page coda to the whole book at the very end.

You only need to read that little essay called The Myth of Sisyphus.

The broader work is about Camus's concept of the absurd and the absurd man within literature.

And it's just like, I don't really care about the character in Dostoevsky and all this other

stuff that you're talking about.

It's of no relevance.

But the myth of Sisyphus, the myth itself, not the book or the essay of his, is this

Greek character and Sisyphus is forced in hell to roll a rock up a hill for eternity.

At the very last moment, the rock falls away.

And Camus's takeaway from the story is that we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

And there's several interpretations of this, but one is once you accept that you are living

an absurdist existence, once you own your reality, it loses its bite.

And you can start with that as your kind of baseline.

And bite is suffering.

And hopelessness.

So I think when people look at how much ridiculousness is happening in America and it's escalating,

you can either think, oh, all is lost.

And I think you and I have lived our lives like this.

You can live life more like a surfer, whereas you're never going to control the ocean.

But you can sure enjoy that ride and stop.

If you're trying to control the waves, yeah, you're done.

But if you're like, all right, I've got my board, I'm going to see where this takes me.

Surfing from what I understand is a pretty fun activity.

And also sometimes dangerous, but you'd have to ask Tulsi about that.

So we were offline talking about Stalin and the evils of the Soviet regime.

One of the things I mentioned, I watched the movie, Mr. Jones, but it's about the 1930s,

all the more the, what would you say, the torture of the Ukrainian people by Stalin.

One interesting thing to me that I'd love to hear your opinion about is the role of

journalism in all of this and also about 1930s Germany.

So what's the role of journalists and intellectuals in a time when trouble is brewing.

But it requires a really sort of brave and deep thinking to understand that trouble is

brewing.

Like if you were a journalist or if you were just like an intellectual, a thinker, but

also a voice in the space of public discourse, what would you do in 1930s about Stalin, about

how the more, and what would you do about Nazi Germany in 1937, 1938?

So that's really funny that you asked that because currently how the book is structured,

it's like books often follow a three act structure, right?

So act three is the 80s, act one is the 30s, and act two is going to be like, all right,

let's suppose you were in the 30s.

Are you just going to give up?

Are you just going to be like, well, we're screwed?

And you'd be right to say things are going to be very bad for a long time.

Or are you going to be one of those few who are like, we're going to do something about

this and we're going to go down swinging.

There are two books I can recommend, which are just masterpieces that are written by

women that just are historians that are just superb.

There's a book called Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipschdott.

She talks about the rise of Nazi Germany as seen through the press.

And what was amazing, and she does a great job empathizing with the press and understand

their perspective, is we remember, and Chamberlain gets a bad rap, Neville Chamberlain for kind

of appeasing Hitler, because not that long ago they had the Great War, they had World

War I, and they had the carnage that the earth had never seen before.

And when you had people made out of meat, meeting industrial machines, and plastic surgery

was invented as a consequence of this, they're coming back mangled and disfigured.

And for what?

And this was a world where the Kaiser was the most evil person ever lived.

And we all had the Western propaganda about the Hun and all the rapes and all this barbarism

and blah, blah, blah.

So not that long later, when you're hearing all this propaganda, which was factual, about

Hitler, it's like, we heard this, we heard this 20 years ago.

This was all lies.

Give us a break.

And she has all the quotes from the different agencies and how they addressed it.

Plus they had very limited information.

It's not like Nazi Germany was an open society where reporters can walk around and they were

under a lot of pressure as well in those areas.

And Hitler himself was pretty good at, he let some stuff slip, but usually he made it

seem like he wants peace.

He wants world peace.

This was amazing.

They were making the argument that because all these Jews were being beaten up on the

street, this proved, this was the hot take of the day, that Hitler was weak because since

Hitler's a statesman and he can't control these hooligans, that shows his control and

power is tenuous and this is all going to go away.

By the way, Hitler thought that too.

He was kind of afraid of the branchers, whatever, he was afraid of these hooligans a little

bit.

They were useful to him, but at a certain point, yeah, they can get in the way.

That's why he wanted to get control of the military, the army, their regiment.

If you want to take over the world, you can't do it with hooligans.

You have to do it with an actual army.

And then you had Kristallnacht, which was a nationwide pogrom, and then all the news

agencies universally were like, oh, crap, we got this wrong, and the condemnation was universal.

So that book traces the West's reaction to what's going on there and including the reaction

to the insipid Holocaust as people being, you know, what they knew, when did they know.

There was not ambiguity about people.

I think there's this myth that she dispels that they didn't know the Holocaust was happening

or they didn't care.

They were aware, but they were already at war with Nazi Germany, like what literally

what else could they do at that point, you know, to rescue all these Jews.

So that's a superb book.

And Ann Applebaum, I think the book is called Red Famine, came out fairly recently.

And she brings the receipts.

And she's a, you know, this is something I really hate with the binary thinkers, where

the people think, oh, you know, if you're a Democrat, you're basically a communist,

they call Joe Biden a Marxist.

It's just like, you know, she's a hard lefty, she's, you know, has TDS.

But this book just systemically lays out what Stalin did.

By the way, I'm triggered by the binary thinkers.

And for those who don't know, TDS 0011 is a trauma derangement syndrome.

Yes.

So they, you know, forced the starvation in this entire population.

And it's not only that, it's like they knew if you weren't starving by looking at you,

you were hiding food.

So they'd come back to your house at night and break your fingers in the door, or take,

burn down your house.

And now you're on the street without food because you lied, because this is the people's

food.

You're a kulak, you're a landowner.

And very quickly, a kulak, which meant like peasant landowner, became anyone who had a

piece of bread.

And this was systemic and ongoing.

And many people in the press did not believe it.

There was a British journalist, I believe, who got out of the train, Ukraine, like one

town earlier and walked and he described all this.

And he was mocked and derided.

And this is just anti Russian propaganda.

Because at the time, in the 30s, this was socialism had come to fruition.

This was a noble experiment.

I'd seen the future and it works, as I think Sidney Webb was the guy who said that.

And the premise was, let's see what happens.

We've never tried something like that.

And they were perfectly happy to have this experiment happen overseas at the price of

the Russian people.

Because it's like, you know what, maybe this will be paradise on earth.

And I address this in my book as well.

This superb essay, I think, by Eugene Genovese.

And he talks about the question.

The question being, what did you know?

And when did you know it?

What did you know about the concentration camps?

What did you know about the starvation?

What did you know about children being taught at school to turn in their parents for having

some extra bread?

And his conclusion is, we all knew.

And we all knew from the beginning, every bit of it.

And we didn't care.

Because we were more interested in promoting this ideology.

So when people are kind of thinking the worst thing on earth is like Robert E. Lee statue

being taken down to Washington, DC.

We were being told, and especially in a much more limited news information world where

now you have literally anyone can have a Twitter, but how many outlets were there, that this

is, we're backwards, they're the future, they're scientific.

We have the vagaries of the market, which led to the Great Depression.

And when you see what was being put over on the American public at the time, anyone who

thinks things are as bad now as they've ever been is simply delusional or ignorant.

Yeah, I would say just as a small aside, that's why reading, as I'm almost done with The Rise

and Fall of the Third Reich, it's a refreshes the, resets the palette of your understanding

what is good and evil in the world that I think is really useful now.

What helps me be really positive and almost naive on Twitter and in the world is by just

studying history and comparing it to how amazing things are today.

But in that time, what would you do?

What does a brave mind do?

And not just acts of bravery, but how do you be effective in that?

That's something I often think about.

It's easy to be an activist in terms of just saying stuff.

It's hard to be effective at your activism.

One of the big questions historians have constantly is how did this happen?

A, to make sure it doesn't happen again, but this is Germany.

This is not some kind of weirdo cult nation.

They're very advanced, very in the land of poets and philosophers.

How did it get to that point that they're just shooting children and everyone's cheering

for this?

Specifically on the anti Semitism and the Holocaust.

But just the totalitarianism, the cult of Hitler and just this whole kind of thing.

This is starting to drop, but there's two sides.

I don't know if you want to separate them.

One is the totalitarianism and the entirety of the Nazi regime.

And then there's the Holocaust, which is going, I would say, very specifically, as I think

you're about to describe, is targeting Jews very much so.

I don't know if you see those as two separate things.

I think they're very interconnected.

But I think if you look at it, everyone thinks that they'd be the ones putting up Anne Frank.

But if you look at the numbers, they'd be the ones calling the Stasi on her or whoever

the people were at the time, and not the Stasi, obviously, and patting themselves on the back

for it.

So sorry to pause on that.

That's a really important thing.

If you're listening to this, and you were in Germany at the time, you would have likely

been willing to commit or at least keep a blind eye to the violence against Jews.

You have to really sit with that idea that you would have been somebody who just sees

this and is not bothered by it, and also very likely kind of understand this as a necessary

evil or even a necessary good.

Yeah.

And I think people think they would be the abolitionists or marching on Selma.

The numbers don't add up to that at all.

And I think the question would be like, what social...

My friend was on Tinder, my friend Matt, who's a great dude.

And the question was, what's the most controversial opinion you have?

This is New York.

And the girl wrote, I hate Trump.

And what people perceive themselves as being courageous in saying and doing, and what is

the actual social costs of you saying or doing this are two very disconnected things.

And we're also trained by corporate media to have completely vapid, uninteresting, banal

ideas and yet regard ourselves as revolutionaries.

There are people who still in New York will take pride because they have a gay friend.

And it's like, first of all, who cares?

But second of all, you are not a hero.

And that person is not your prop, by the way.

That's another big problem.

Which is why I'd like to give Richard Wolff a shout out for being an intellectual who

talks about communism.

I think it takes kind of a heroic intellectual right now to speak about communism seriously.

There's difficult waters to tread.

Is that the expression?

There's difficult paths to walk.

I love watching a robot try to use idiom in a language he doesn't even know.

0011.

I'm quite deeply hurt by the binary comment.

Are you?

Your feeling has gone from one to zero.

What is love?

My buffers have overflown.

But there's difficult, I feel like communism is universally seen as a bad thing currently

in intellectual circles.

Or actually maybe some people disagree with that.

People say far left, people are trying to, there's some people who argue the BLM movement

is some kind of a Marxist.

I don't really follow the deep logic in that, whatever.

They said they were formed by Marxism, the founder, co founder.

But stating that is different than...

There's Marx the totalitarian, there's also Marx the revolutionary.

I think they're talking more like we're revolutionaries, we're going to overthrow the status quo.

Yeah, right.

But we can have that further discussion.

But I just don't think they speak deeply about political systems and saying communism is

going to be the righteous system.

There's not a deep intellectual discourse is what I mean.

But if you were to try to be on stage with the Jordan Peterson, to me the brave thing

now, it would be to argue for communism.

It'd be interesting to see.

Not many people do it.

I certainly wouldn't be willing to do it.

I don't have enough...

I don't, first of all, I don't believe it, but second of all, it's a very difficult argument

to make because you will get so much fire, which is why I like Richard Wolff, he's one

of the people who is quite rigorously showing that there's some good ideas within the system

of communism, specifically saying that attacking more the negative sides of capitalism.

Just saying that capitalism potentially is more dangerous than communism.

I mean, I disagree with that, but I think it's a...

I love how something is like we've got a body count of 60 million, but this everything

is potentially, like water can drown everyone on earth.

So this is incoherent.

Well, I think nuclear weapons are bad, but nuclear energy is good.

Sure.

Well, nuclear weapons also can be good.

You can easily make the argument, which I don't know that I subscribe to, that nuclear

weapons prevented boots on the ground war, or it caused them to be much more contained.

And they're also quite effective at changing the direction of an asteroid that's about

to hit earth, as I've learned from a movie.

Armageddon.

And they're actually useful as Elon Musk has claimed for prior to colonizing Mars, making

it more habitable.

Oh, okay.

Got to do something.

But yes, but I guess what I'm saying is there's a place for nuance.

And there's some topics so hot, like communism, where nuance is very difficult to have.

And I feel like with Nazi Germany, it was a similar thing at the time.

You want to talk about Jeanette Rankin, who was one of my favorite people.

So Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress.

She was elected before women's suffrage was a constitutional amendment from Montana.

She was elected in 1916.

She was one of a handful of people to vote against the US going into the Great War, which

was the right call at the time.

She was a pacifist Republican as well, coincidentally.

She lost her seat, ran again in, was it 1940?

Got the seat again, and was the only person to vote against getting into World War II.

It was not a unanimous choice.

Jeanette Rankin was the one person.

And she said, you can no more win a war than you can win a hurricane.

So she's one of these interesting, and talk about bravery.

You're the one vote after Pearl Harbor to say, we're not doing this.

And I mean, the pressure she must have been under at the time is, and of course, many

people are not interested in hearing her perspective.

She's crazy.

She's evil, blah, blah, blah.

It's also funny, someone on my Twitter when I talked about her goes, maybe she had Hitler's

sympathies.

Like, yeah, Ms. Rankin was a big fan of Hitler.

You figured it out, guys.

Do you think there's an argument to be made that United States should not have gotten

involved in World War II?

Oh, easy.

An easy argument.

The argument, I talk about this in The New Right.

So on internet circles, there's something called Godwin's Law, which means the longer

an internet conversation goes on, the probability someone gets compared to Hitler becomes one.

In certain New Right circles, the longer the conversation goes on, the more likelihood

that the argument will become we shouldn't have ended World War II also becomes one.

And the argument is, at the very least, stay back, let Hitler and Stalin kill each other

off, and then go in and knock off the weaker one.

And you're going to be saving, destroying two nightmare systems.

And I think that's an easy argument to make.

Now, it's hard to pull off after Pearl Harbor.

But in terms of strategy, I don't think that's a tough sell.

What about after Pearl Harbor?

I mean, that's what I'm saying.

After Pearl Harbor, how are you going to sell it to the people?

The argument is, blah, blah, the Holocaust.

The Holocaust, there's no scenario where that doesn't happen, really, unless you're going

in way earlier.

But even so, Hitler had said, if the Jews launch another war, we're going to wipe them

from the face of the earth.

So the Jews are being held hostage by Hitler as an argument for this.

Another thing he did, which was diabolical, is in order to make it that people could not

accept Jews as refugees, if they were going to leave Germany, they had to be penniless.

So now you have, it's not like they're coming over with money and they can take care of

themselves.

No, no.

They're going to be completely destitute.

It makes it harder to accept them, yeah.

Millions of destitute people who don't speak the language, it's a tough sell.

So speaking of good ones law, what do you make of this condition, Trump derangement

syndrome?

Yeah.

And the idea of comparing Trump to Hitler?

I think it's despicable.

And I'll give you an example, something parallel that I think more people should be regarding

as despicable.

Earlier in 2020, we were all told that unless we were in Syria immediately, the Kurds were

going to be exterminated.

They invoke the Holocaust.

This is going to be another genocide.

And if you're not for this, you're basically forcing another Holocaust.

None of the people who use this argument, we didn't go to Syria, the Kurds were exterminated,

they just vanished from the news, had any consequences for using this kind of a comparison.

So I think it's really kind of fatuous.

And I think it's amazing that people think Hitler's the only tyrant who ever lived.

Like everyone who's bad is specifically Hitler.

You know how you know he's not Hitler?

Because you can tweet at him, and no one comes to your house to kill your family.

Like that's kind of a big difference.

Also there between Trump and many of his critics is that his grandchildren will be raised as

Jews.

So that's also kind of a, and Deborah Lipschad talks about this a lot.

The New York Times at the time, there's another book called Buried by the Times, which talks

about the New York Times in the World War II.

Because the idea that Jews weren't white was the Hitler idea, the New York Times at the

time, Salzburger, wanted to be against this idea.

So they specifically downplayed the antisemitism as opposed to the Nazis are being oppressive.

So the argument that you can separate Nazism from antisemitism is a historical debate people

have.

And my perspective is, I think it's, I do not find it convincing that you can separate

those two.

I think antisemitism was essential to Nazism.

I think Nazism and Mussolini's fascism have very big differences.

And do you think, do you think antisemitism was fundamental to who Hitler was or was it

just that?

So this is the interesting thing is like, was it a tool that he saw as being effective?

No, he believed it.

So why do you see those as intricately connected?

Could Hitler have accomplished the same amount or more without the Holocaust?

Yeah.

Because think about how many resources you had to divert at a time where you have Operation

Barbarossa with Stalin.

So why are they connected?

Why are they so connected?

Is it because Hitler was insane or was he a bad strategist or what?

He was obviously a bad strategist.

He had no need to open a second front.

His generals, my understanding, told him this is crazy.

It didn't work out for him at all.

I mean, to draw Russia and her resources into that war, it makes absolutely no sense in

retrospect.

There's a book about, I forgot what it's called, where it talked about him at that point was

just high all the time on amphetamines and that could have affected his thinking.

Yeah, there's a really good book on drugs.

I forget what it's called, but yeah, it's a really good one.

But it was, I mean, scapegoating is a big part and parcel of the Nazi mythology and

this kind of one universal figure to explain this kind of skeleton key.

But it could have been the communists.

I mean, that could have been the source of the hatred.

But the communists didn't get Germany into World War I like he said the Jews did.

It seems to me that the atrocity of the Holocaust is the reason we see Hitler as evil.

No, the reason we see Hitler as evil is because of World War II propaganda still.

Because we don't see Stalin as evil.

Right, that's my main point.

We don't see Mao as evil to that extent.

I think that...

Why?

Like why would you say that?

You know what?

Because...

The nature of that propaganda.

Because I think a lot of the problem for certain type of mentality is Hitler didn't mass

murder equally.

So as long as you're killing just one group, it's a problem.

But if you're murdering everyone equally, all of a sudden, it's like, what are you going

to do?

So the fact like you were saying, the Hall of the Moor is not common knowledge.

The fact that Mao's 50 million dead are not common knowledge and Richard Nixon can be

raising a glass to him in China.

These are things that I think the West has not done a good job reconciling.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Frank.

Frank who?

Frank, you for being my friend, Michael.

And the heart attacks will say, Frank, you for being my friend.

This is...

You got to do it like this.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now back to Hitler.

Do you think Hitler could have been stopped?

We kind of talked about it a little bit in terms of how to...

What is the brave thing to do in the time of Nazi Germany?

But do you think, I mean, I'm not even going to ask about Stalin in terms of could Stalin

have been stopped?

Because probably the answer there is no.

But on the Hitler side, could Hitler have been stopped?

I think a lot of these things, a lot of luck has to play with it.

He was almost assassinated.

If you mean by like the West, it's very hard.

I mean, yeah.

By the German people too.

I mean, like if we're politically speaking, there was a rise to power through the thirties,

through the twenties, really, I mean, like can whoever...

It's not about Hitler.

It's about that kind of way of thinking, that totalitarian control that always leads to

trouble at sometimes at a mass scale.

Could that have been stopped in Germany or maybe in the Soviet Union?

I think this is one of the best arguments against radicalization in the States, which

is how do you engage when you have like 30% of the population who are members of a party,

which is dedicated to systemically overthrowing the existing democracy.

Stalin gave orders that the communists who had a pretty sizable population, the Reichstag,

that their target shouldn't be the Nazis, but the liberals and the social Democrats

and they invented the term social fascist for them.

So instead of, they're just like jihadis, instead of taking their sights on Nazism,

they set their sights on the moderates because they figured the choice between Hitler and

us we're going to win.

And this was a huge gamble and they were all killed or had to flee and ones who fled were

killed also by Stalin to my understanding.

So this is an easy way where he could have been certainly heavily mitigated.

What about France and England that it was obvious that Hitler was lying and they wanted

peace so bad that they were willing to put up with it even after Czechoslovakia?

Like this is the anti pacifist argument, which is like they should have threatened military

force more.

But then the other anti, the anti anti pacifist argument is if you're going to remember Barack

Obama had that, the red line, if you cross this red line in Syria, we're going to go

in and Assad or whatever is like, yeah, cool.

And he's like, oh, okay, well, sorry.

So if you're threatening force, there's the great song lyric, don't show your guns unless

you intend to fight, right?

So if it's very clear with, with free countries through what's in the press, whether the institutional

will is there to follow through on these threats.

So I think we have been very hard for Chamberlain to rally the British people to take on Hitler

just after the great, I mean, the suffering that Britain's took the great war, they still,

you know, obviously it means so much more to them than does to us in the West.

What about what do you make of Churchill then?

Like why was Churchill able to rally the British people?

Why was he like, do you give much credit to Churchill for being one of the great forces

in stopping Hitler in World War II?

I don't think that's really in dispute.

I think he was very much regarded as this kind of the right man at the right time.

And I think Chamberlain took a gamble.

He, the expression peace in our time was Neville Chamberlain when he signed the appeasement

with Hitler and he goes, we now have peace in our time, now go home and get a good night's

sleep.

That's what he said.

Cause he's like, all right, you know, he's going to stop here.

And it's not impossible that if you just gave him, like if you gave Saddam Hussein Kuwait,

it's not impossible that he's not going to, you know, invade Saudi Arabia next or something

like that.

Let's see.

Okay.

The last thing I've read, it's like, of course there's, there's a, it's not impossible, but

when you're in the room with Hitler, you should be able to see like man to man, like, like

to me, a great leader should be able to see past the facade and see like, like, yes, everything

in life is a risk, but it seems like the right risk to take with Hitler, like it's surprising

to me.

I know there's charisma, but it's surprising to me.

People did not see through this facade.

I really hate the idea of hindsight and everything being 20, 20, and I think it's a very good

idea.

Generally, I'm thinking generally not in this specific instance to give our ancestors more

credit than they, than, than we tend to give them because people often, here's a great

example from another context, which is a lightning rods.

People always talk about religious people being stupid and superstitious and they weren't,

they often were very well reasoned and example of this is lightning rods, which is every

year whatever town, the church was the tallest building and that's the one that always got

hit by lightning and got caught on fire.

Now what, it's a coincidence that it's always the church, like that makes logical sense

that they didn't realize, well, it's because the tallest and therefore that attracts electricity.

And in fact, when they invented lighting rods, this is a controversy because it's like, well,

how is God going to show his displeasure if now it's striking this lightning rod not burning

down the church?

So a lot of times things are a lot more coherent than we give them credit for.

And again, Chamberlain didn't, he's the head of a parliamentary party.

So he does not have the freedom in a sense that a Hitler would to be like, all right,

we're doing this again, boys.

We don't know what it's like in the room with Hitler.

Come on.

That's, that's, we really have no idea.

But I think you have to think about that, right?

Yeah, but you can, I can very easily see him in the room being very calm and charming.

And then you think, okay, the guy with the speeches is the act and he's putting on a

show for his people and this is the real one.

Okay.

So let's, let's take somebody as an example.

Let's take our mutual friend, Vladimir Putin.

Yes.

Okay.

I don't know why saying his name makes my voice crack.

Because he's scared he can hear you.

It's like Beetlejuice.

Volodya.

So there's a lot of people that...

Was he the one who built you?

No, that was a, that was a collaboration.

It's a double blind engineering effort where I was not told of who my maker was.

There's a backstory, but...

There's a talking cricket.

Pinocchio.

He'll be a real boy someday.

I talk about him quite a bit because I find him fascinating.

Now there's a, there's a really important line that people say, like, why does Lex admire

Putin?

I do not admire Putin.

I find the man fascinating.

I find Hitler fascinating.

I find a lot of figures in history fascinating, both good and bad.

And the figures, just as you said, that are with us today, like Vladimir Putin, like Donald

Trump, like Barack Obama, it's difficult to place them on the spectrum of good and evil

because that's only really applies to like when you see the consequences of their action

in a historical context.

So there's some people who say that Vladimir Putin is evil.

And based on our discussion about Hitler, that's something I think about a lot, which

is in the room with Putin, and there's also a lot of historical descriptions of what it's

like to be in the room with Hitler in the 1930s.

There is a lot of charisma.

In the same way, I find Putin to be very charismatic in his own way.

The humor, the wit, the brilliance, there's a simplicity of the way he thinks that really,

if taken at face value, looks like a very intelligent, honest man thinking practically

about how to build a better Russia constantly, almost like an executive.

He looks like a man who loves his job in a way that Trump, for example, doesn't, meaning

like he loves laws and rules and how to...

There's no adversarial press, so that's going to help.

Yes.

And he's popular with his people, that's also going to help enormously.

I'm talking about strictly the man, directly the words coming out of his mouth, like all

the videos and interviews I watch, I'm based on that, not the press, not the reporting.

You can just see that here's a man who's able to display a charisma that's not...

Like I can see, that's why I love Joe Rogan, is like you could tell the guy is genuine

and is a good person.

And you could tell immediately that once you meet Joe, that he's going to be offline, also

a good person.

You could tell there's signals that we send that are difficult to describe.

In the same way, you could tell Putin is like he genuinely loves his job and wants to build

a better Russia.

There's the argument that he is actually an evil man behind that charisma, or is able

to assassinate people, limit free press, all those kinds of things.

Like that's...

What do we do with that?

So what do human beings like journalists or what do other leaders when they're in their

room with Putin do with those kinds of notions in deciding how to act in this world and deciding

what policy to enact, all those kinds of things?

Just like with Hitler, when Chairman is in the room with Hitler, how does he decide how

to act?

Well, let's go back to my wheelhouse, which is North Korea.

So when your entire world is based on being against Trump and everything Trump does is

buffoonery or counterproductive, the conclusion of your reporting is going to be pretty much

given.

I was very hopeful that there would be some positive outlooks or outcomes rather of Trump's

meeting with Kim Jong Un.

It looked like there was a space for things to go a bit better.

I talked about it a lot at the time.

And Trump was under no illusions about who he was dealing with.

People pretend that, oh, he was kind of naive.

He had one of the refugees that had stayed the union, you know, lifting up his crutch.

The first thing he sat down and talked to Xi Jinping about in Mar a Laga right after

he became inaugurated was North Korea.

Barack Obama said that when he sat down Trump in the White House during the transfer of

power, he said North Korea is the biggest issue.

So I think a good leader, whether or not you consider Trump a good leader, has to be aware

of, all right, I'm going to have to have relationships of some kind, even if it's adversarial, with

some really evil, evil, horrible people, which Kim Jong Un clearly is.

Well, I don't think there's anybody that has a perspective that North Korean Kim Jong

Un or ill are not evil, right?

Correct.

But with, in 1930s Germany, isn't it a little bit more nuanced and difficult?

Yeah, because Hitler hasn't done anything yet and he's just a blowhard and he's an anti

Semite, sure, but he's...

What about like before the war breaks out, like what about the basic actionable anti

Semitism when you're like just attacking, hurting?

Are you talking about Kristallnacht or are you talking about the Night of Long Knives?

Kristallnacht.

So it's the Night of the Broken Glass.

Yeah, yeah, the Long Knives is when he assassinated a bunch of his people, that was something

different.

Yeah, so like when you're actually attacking your own citizenry.

Yeah, that was universally condemned, Kristallnacht, and that was very shocking, its level of barbarism

to the West.

Because I think we still want to believe, understandably, that things aren't as bad

as they seem.

We would rather...

This is why the North Korea book I did, Dear Reader, is used in a humorous framework because

if you have to look, it's like looking to the sun.

If you stared it straight on, it's very hard to do.

So you have to kind of look at it obliquely and then you're kind of realizing the enormity

of the depravity.

And again, pogroms in Russia had been a thing for a very long time.

And there's a difference between, okay, we're going to sack these villages and persecute

people and we're going to systematically exterminate them.

There's still levels of evil and depravity.

So you did write the book, Dear Reader, on Kim Jong Il, Dear Reader, the unauthorized

autobiography of Kim Jong Il.

So that's the previous leader of North Korea.

Third one is the un, no creativity on the naming.

Well, no, this is intentional because it's a throwback to the dad.

So there's been only three leaders in North Korea.

So we've talked about the history of Hitler and Stalin, men like these.

I think it's important to understand that the history of those kinds of humans, there's

the history of North Korea is not well written about or understood, which is why your book

is exceptionally powerful and important.

So maybe in a big broad way, can you say who was, who is Kim Jong Il as a man, as a leader,

as a historical figure that we should understand and why should we understand them?

So I wrote Dear Reader by going to North Korea and getting all their propaganda, which is

translated into several languages because the conceit is everyone on earth is interested

in them and wants to mirror their ideology.

And he died in 2011 and you wrote the book in 2012.

I went there in 2012.

I wrote the book, came out in 2014.

So Kim Jong Il is, though not an intellect, North Korea's version of Forrest Gump in that

when they write their history, whenever something happens, he's there.

And by telling his life story, it's in the first person, he's telling the history of

North Korea.

So I wanted to write the kind of book where in one book, and it's the kind of reading

you could do in the beach or the bathroom, you're gonna get the entire history and know

everything you need to know about North Korea in one accessible outlet.

And it's what people don't appreciate about North Korea, there's several things, how bad

it is.

And this didn't happen overnight.

This was very systemic that what this family did to that country where piece by piece,

they did everything in their power to hermetically seal it from the rest of the world, ramp up

the oppression, keep any information from coming in.

And they're very creative and innovative in their style of manipulation and control.

So there is a farcical element.

Let me give you an example.

So people in the West kind of get it wrong.

They talk about, oh, they talk about when Kim Jong Il played golf for the first time,

they get 17 holes in one.

There's this one story about Kim Jong Il shrinking time.

And this is a story, it sounds supernatural, but it's not.

So Kim Jong Il is at a conference, the Dear Leader, and someone is giving a talk.

And while that person is giving a talk, Kim Jong Il is taking notes and working on his

work.

And he has an aide who keeps interrupting him with questions and the speaker keeps stopping.

And Kim Jong Il says, why are you stopping, goes, I see you're doing these other things.

And he goes, no, no, I can do all these things at once, everyone's shocked.

And they said, this is why Kim Jong Il looks at time, not like a plane, but like a cube,

and he can shrink time.

And my friend goes, do they mean multitasking?

And yes, Kim Jong Il is the only person in North Korea who's capable of multitasking.

So in order to elevate him, they basically make everyone else in North Korea completely

incompetent.

And that has a purpose because should the leader go away, this country is going to collapse

overnight.

So they laugh in the West about all these newspapers show him at the factory and he's

at the fish hatchery at the paper plant.

They say the difference in North Korea is that the leader goes among the people and

does what he calls field guidance.

So he will go in that farm and be like, this is what you need to do.

And he'll go here and he's so smart, he's good at everything.

And thanks to him for sharing his wisdom with us.

And he's not removed from the people like in every other country.

Why does that seem to go wrong with humans, do you think that this kind of the structure

where there's this one figure, this authoritarian, this totalitarian structure where there's

one figure that's a source of comfort and knowledge?

Kim Jong Il is not good at farming.

Kim Jong Il is not good at the machinery.

It's all a complete lie.

Or the things he'll point out will be things that are completely obvious.

So here's another example that they use.

In North Korea, they have something called the Tower of the Juche Idea, which is an obelisk,

which looks like the Washington Monument.

But it's completely different because it's got this like plastic torch at the top.

And they talk about in their propaganda how all the architects got together and they said,

oh, we should make this the second tallest stone obelisk in the world.

And Kim Jong Il says, no, let's make it the tallest.

They're like, we never thought of this before.

And the way it's presented as if, and like, he's the first person to think of this, like

these architects are having a brainstorming session at the Tower of the Juche Idea.

They're like, all right, we got to do something innovative to put North Korea on the map.

What can we do?

How about second biggest?

He's going to go for this.

And then he's like, make, oh, we never thought of this.

It's so, because I present it at face value, people sometimes say the book's a satire.

It's not a satire.

I downplayed all this stuff.

It's a farce.

Here's another example.

North Korea is very big.

And I think Russia is to some extent too, on amusement parks, funfairs, they call them,

in the British style, because this is a chance for the people to all get together.

And there was this amusement park, it's almost like South Park, Cartman, where there's all

these rides.

And Kim Jong Il's like, I'm not going to let any elderly or children take these rides until

I put myself in danger and ride them myself.

And they go, but dear leader, it's drizzling.

And he goes, no, I have to make sure these rides are going to be safe for everyone, even

during the light rain.

They go, well, can we go on these rides with you?

No, no, no.

I have to be the courageous one.

And he's riding all the rides and they're standing there crying at his courage.

But that's what's, and you ask all the things in one power.

It's like, listen, I'm quite confident that those funfair engineers are in a position

to ride Modest Mouse, whatever it's called, by themselves and be like, yeah, okay, this

is good for the kids.

Although to be fair, some of those amusement parks are pretty rusty and dangerous.

That kind of propaganda, I guess what I'm playing a devil's advocate is like, it's comforting

and it's useful.

But it does seem that that naturally leads to an abuse of power.

How can it be used correctly?

No one person has the intellect or the mind to understand the entirety of an economy,

let alone every individual field of interest.

Well, for example, you can have an artificial intelligence system that understands the entirety

of it.

Your affect just completely changed.

The mask slipped.

I guess you could have an artificial intelligence system.

But the question is, can that, I mean, the human version of that is like, you can hire

a lot of experts, right?

You can be an extremely good manager.

Since everything's dynamic, they're not going to have the data to kind of manage it well.

It seems that there's a, like what George Washington allegedly did, it seems like most

humans are not able to fire themselves.

You're not able to like, ultimately be a check on your own power.

But that's not, if I was creating a human, that's not an obvious bug of the system that

we would not be able to fire ourselves, to know when we have, I mean, it seems like that's

something you have to know always, like that's something I often wonder is like, am I wrong

about this?

Well, this is what we talked about earlier, what are the safety valves to make sure that,

okay, if I am incorrect, or my knowledge is finite, Plato's cave kind of thing, what mechanisms

are in place that my mistake or limited information isn't going to have the deleterious consequences?

And North Korea does not really have that, and as a result, they had polio in the 90s.

So there is a, you write about it straight, but there's a humor to it, because it's an

absurdly evil place, I suppose.

A bunch of people, I asked, I said that I'm talking to you and a bunch of people ask questions.

Oh, I got to hear from the plebs, you asked me before we started recording, I specifically

said no, it was my contract.

Yeah, and you gave, I gave you all the pink skittles or whatever.

But they,

So pink skittles, you know, pink.

I'm trolling, Michael, let me explain to you how that works.

We should go at malice.locals.com and sign up and pay, I think the membership fee is

several thousand dollars, it's very, it's not.

It's not for the layman.

Yeah, but the service is excellent.

You get a coat with it.

But yeah, I went there, posted a lot of really brilliant people there, people should join

that community.

If you find Michael interesting, or if you just want to go and say why he's wrong, it's

a great place to have that.

It's not a good place for that, I assure you.

A lot of really kind people.

So anyway, there's a bunch of people ask that we should talk about humor.

So pretend hypothetically speaking that I'm a robot asking you to explain humor to me.

So dear reader, I mean, there's a humor, you so wonderfully dance between serious dark

topics and then seriously dark humor.

Can you try to, if you were to write like a, I don't know, a Wikipedia article, maybe

a book about your philosophy of humor, what do you think is the role of humor in all of

this?

A joke is like a baby.

You can't dissect it and then put it back together and expect it to work.

Trust me on this one.

Despite no matter how you carve that thing up, it's not going to be working the next

day.

And you need it to sew those little sneakers with those hands.

I don't know that humor is something that is very explainable.

People there's something called claptor, where this is like the worst kind of humor where

people applaud because they agree with what you're saying, as opposed to laughter.

That's the poetry reading and the drag queens do that too, I think because of the nails.

You laugh, it's a visceral reaction.

When someone on Twitter is insisting, you know, that's not funny, you're not in a position

to make that claim.

And let's go back to North Korea.

I had a refugee I knew and he went to high school here and he was talking to his buddies

and they said, hey, remember when we were kids, we had Pokemon and he goes, oh yeah,

except instead of Pokemon, I watched my dad starve to death, which is the truth.

Now, who are any of us to tell him not to make that joke?

I don't know what it's like watching anyone, including my dad, starve to death and my dad's

fatty so he's not going hungry anytime soon.